


carry star dust in your veins

by kogane (cybersquatt)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Family Reunions, Gen, Identity Issues, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 21:30:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13866390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cybersquatt/pseuds/kogane
Summary: In which Keith learns the difference between being bounded by blood and bounding yourself by your blood.





	carry star dust in your veins

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to [pinkpallieallie](https://pinkpallieallie.tumblr.com) for beta-ing my work!!
> 
> alt title: author low-key thirsts over icarus' myth

The ship is silent, and Keith’s ears are still ringing. Whether it’s because of the silence from the sudden stop of laser beams shooting at them or his mind blanking out, Keith can’t tell. The knife feels misshapen against his back and his entire being feels out of place, unbalanced. He couldn't even finish his sentence, left hanging off the cliff, forgotten. Then it hits him all at once and Keith can’t handle it.

He rubs the sides of head, his face, his eyes, rubbing the sweat and grim over all him. He feels like he’s overheating, exploding like the star Allura almost piloted them into. He feels someone -- _not just someone, goddamn it, this person knows him but he doesn’t know her_ \-- grab ahold his hands. Keith can feel himself shaking- from shock or anger, he can’t tell. He can’t _handle_ it.

“Keith, listen to me.” Krolia says with a voice that dances between firm and begging.

“No!” Keith struggles out her hold, letting the familiar feeling of anger take over him. “No! You can’t just tell me and then-” Keith doesn’t know what to say, words choking out of him by force. Everything feels like it’s choking him, air caught in his throat.

Krolia tries to reach out for him again before stopping herself, clenching her fists. “Keith, let me explain.”

God, how long has Keith wanted this? An explanation laid right out in front of him, wrapped up in a nice package and bow. Now, after all this, after the trials, after the deaths, it feels so _insulting_. It burns his veins, almost like poison.

Anger is not a new emotion. No, Keith felt this anger when he injured Iverson’s eye, when he challenged Zarkon outright, and when they took his dagger away. Keith thought it had finally ran its course along with everything else, that he had finally taught himself what Kolivan has been telling him all this time. It was supposed to be gone, killed dead, but now Keith can’t stop it.

He had always wanted to know his blood, even if it meant spilling it. Keith’s shoulder burns; the Blade of Marmora teaches knowledge or death. He doesn’t feel like he earned it.

He didn’t earn it. _God, he failed the mission._

“Fuck!” Keith curses out loud. He isn’t a kid anymore. He’s a soldier in war that has seen enough people die to stop giving a shit. “What did you do?! What do you mean it will get to them?!”

If Krolia is annoyed or surprised by the sudden subject change, she doesn’t show it. “I did what I had to do to protect you.” She speaks like she’s talking up to a commanding officer -- stiff and monotone.

Keith has to sit down because it feels like his bones are turning to dust inside him. Krolia grabs ahold of his shoulder and leads him to a seat and he’s helpless to stop her. He doesn’t like this, feeling out of control. It feels like it’s tearing him apart.

“Keith, breathe with me. Please, in… and out.” Krolia tries to coach him but Keith doesn’t listen. It burns his lungs too much to try.

They float aimlessly in space.

 

Sirius, the dog star, is the brightest star in the night sky that you can see.

They called him the greatest pilot of their generation, the star student. The Poster Boy was his title in the Galaxy Garrison Academy and it had always felt too tight. The Poster Boy who was mentored by Takashi Shirogane, the most known pilot on Earth. (His classmates’ jealousy showed.) The Poster Boy who was mentored by someone who stars on posters. (Keith never liked the title, the attention.)

Whatever his classmates fantasized about him, his reality was far more lonely.

The Poster Boy, who had lived in every corner on the earth, thought that if one place could make him feel grounded, it would be where there were none. That the constellations would always help him navigate across it if Keith were to forget his way.

With a story along the lines of a beast turning into stone, a story he can't remember the rest of, the Canis Major was always one of the first constellations Keith recognized. To find the it, you just have to find Sirius, burning brighter than what Earth thinks its worth. It is estimated that Sirius only has over one billion years left to live. He was supposed to have all the time in the world.

Keith lost himself only two years ago, just like the signal of the rocketship on the Garrison radars. The ground was swept beneath him before he could realize that maybe it wasn't what he wanted.

 

Krolia ends up being the one to pilot them back to the Marmora headquarters.

Keith would've fought tooth and nail for the seat if it weren't for the bone deep tiredness he feels. He feels shaky and restless but with no energy left in his system.

People called him a firecracker that never burns out. Too hot-headed for any good. He stands on hot coals because the heat inside him is much more than what anything else can offer. Screw Icarus and melting wings, he would join the sun rather than fall. He doesn't need wings to find a way to the stars, his blood already has.

But suns are just stars, and stars burn out. Firecrackers are ephemeral and myths are myths.

Keith’s cold and tired and Krolia pilots the ship.

 

“Do you need an explanation?” Krolia asks during the ride, now that Keith has ran his course of anger. Or rather ran out of ways to express it.

In reality, or at least in his own eyes, he doesn't need it. He has found his place in the Blade of Marmora when he couldn't in Voltron. He knows himself, and he knows he’s not defined by his blood.

(But he did, didn't he? The only weapon he uses to protect himself nowadays is activated by the blood of the group he chose to define himself with. New blood cells may be born in every minute he denies the rules and morals of those he chose to follow but it doesn't change the code of them. It does not change him.)

But he _wants_ to hear it, to finally know.

(Knowledge or death, knowledge or death, knowledge or--)

“I think I deserve one.”

He was swept off his feet when he wasn’t ready for the landing once before. War teaches you to take ahold of the fight within you, to grab it and wield it. To breathe in your star-exploding heat as oxygen in a place where there is none.

 

 

It starts and ends off pretty simple. A story Keith has heard, seen, experienced so many times before. Except now there's no strangers on unknown planets but now the stranger is his own mother on a planet that Keith can never forget.

Krolia was told to head for a planet under risk of being conquered by Galra forces. She meets his father and falls as hard as Icarus did when he finally met the water after the sky had rejected him.

“I never planned on leaving you, Keith,” Krolia says, with a undertone of sadness too strong to ignore. “But the Galra were still a threat and I had to go.”

Keith knows. God, does Keith how it feels to be ripped from something he never wanted to let go. (His head has felt so empty without the warm presence he had gotten used to. He feels as though if he swung it around too much, it would pop right off like those cheap dollar store dolls.) Someone told him once that it's okay to be selfish; Keith feels incredibly selfish to say that he wish she didn't go.

“I didn't want to leave you or your father, Keith.”

(It doesn't sit right.)

“Keith, please believe me.”

(It doesn't feel okay.)

“I believe you.” Keith says, his hands twitching with restless energy that melts into his skin like the quinessence that burned him months ago.

(Keith doesn't take advice well, he never liked the Poster Boy title.)

 

“I regret leaving.”

“The only memory I have of you is you leaving, and the last memory of my father was him not even saying goodbye,” Keith says, not knowing why. To fill the air that is void of any real communication between them. “I was all alone for _years_.”

Krolia’s grip on the controls tightens noticeably. “I regret leaving you and your father. I regret it all. I'm so sorry, Keith.”

His mother still has a lot to make up for, something a few words and confessions can't solve. The stars blur together; Keith doesn't know the constellations here. He was a fool to ever think he could find his way back to a star when he has gone too far ahead to ever look back. Stars dim within distances; even Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky on the planet his parents once raised and left him, is too far for even see.

“I'm not going anywhere, Keith. I swear on my life that I won't leave you again.”

Keith, the greatest pilot of his generation, flew too far into the sky -- and now he’s too lost to find his way back to crash into the ocean. Myths are lessons; Keith doesn't like the Poster Boy title. He never learns, even if Kolivan shoves it down his throat. His emotions are too hot for him; he once thought that if his emotions weren’t fit for what people could handle on earth, he might as well merge with the sun. The only thing that could stand a chance to him.

(He never counted the fact that maybe the sun would swallow him whole, tear up every inch of him and remake it into itself. Treat him like iron and mold him into something he was never meant to become. Even if he carried the stars in his bloodstream, he was never meant to be them.)

“I won't leave you.”

Keith breathes in the stale, supplied oxygen. “What will happen when we get back?”

If he must fall and face the impact of water, the sun has to melt his wax-made wings first. He may have stardust in his DNA but it does not mean he floats among them.

“I'm not sure.”

The sun can try and swallow him whole and mold him like people mold weapons from iron. He won't let it. Spilled blood does not guarantee success and the ending doesn't have to be the same in every story. If Earth was able to handle his heat before, it could again.

Krolia grabs his hand, whether in comfort, promise, or both. “But we'll face it together.”

If people were able to map out the constellations before, they can again. Keith can find his way back within time.

**Author's Note:**

> [my carrd.co](https://somebody.carrd.co/)   
> 


End file.
